By Tom Kenworthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 2, 1999; Page A22
LITTLETON, Colo., May 1 When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed into Columbine High School 11 days ago with two shotguns, a 9mm rifle and a 9mm handgun, Lance Kirklin got the full treatment.
They blew his jaw away at point-blank range with a pellet round from one of the sawed-off shotguns, pumped a slug from the other into his right leg, damaging his femur, and shot him in the left leg and chest with one of the 9mm guns. Thirty surgeons have worked on him for more than 25 hours, transferring bone from his leg to replace his jawbone, among other things. In the next two years, he will undergo many more surgeries. "Lance has many challenges to face," parents Mike and Dawn Kirklin said in a statement this week.
A typical outdoors-loving Coloradan who fishes and hikes, 16-year-old Kirklin was one of the most grievously wounded of the 23 people treated at Denver area hospitals. But he was not alone in receiving multiple gunshot wounds from short range, which surgeons said attests to the viciousness of the two assailants.
Accused Mideast terrorist "Osama bin Laden can't be worse in terms of the attitude they brought into this," said Wade Smith, chief of orthopedic trauma surgery at Denver Health Medical Center. "You can see a random emotionalism to the pattern." Most of the teenagers treated at the region's premier trauma facility, said Smith, were shot four or five times, as were victims treated at other hospitals.
Richard Castaldo, 17: shot five times in the chest, back and abdomen.
Valeen Schnurr, 18: nine shrapnel and bullet wounds in the chest, abdomen and arm. She's home from the hospital, with four bullets in her body.
Sean Graves, 15: shot four or five times in the back and abdomen.
Anne Marie Hochhalter, 17: shot three or four times in the chest and liver.
At Swedish Medical Center, a facility just five minutes from Columbine High School that treated four of the most seriously wounded, trauma surgeon and critical care director Burt Katubig saw young patients who had been shot in the back as they fled random, sprayed gunfire.
Katubig used to practice at Cook County Hospital in Chicago and has seen more than his share of gang violence and drive-by shootings. But confronted with so many children shot in the back, he reached a chilling conclusion. "Most of the time if you are out to shoot someone, you shoot once and walk to the next person," he said. "They were shooting to hurt and maim. It indicates a viciousness to me. They did not care."
Remarkably, each of the four students listed in critical condition the day after the shootings has survived. That is a tribute, doctors said, to quick, efficient work by paramedics, the fact that local hospitals were fully staffed at midday and prepared by news reports for multiple casualties, and the resilience of young bodies. "If they could get to a kid and they had a pulse, the chances were very high they were going to live," Smith said. He added that a British surgeon working at Denver Health Medical Center that day looked at one patient and told Smith: " 'This young man would have died in Britain.' "
Another factor was triage by emergency medical technicians on the scene. "You had to have a certain chance of making it to make it," Smith said.
Lisa Kreutz showed the kind of grit that astounds adults. With her shoulder blown apart and her right hand bleeding from an arterial wound, she lay in the library for 2½ hours. "She's lucky she didn't bleed to death," Smith said. She went home Wednesday.
"These kids are not victims," Natalie Graves said of her son Sean and the others. "They're survivors."
Mark Taylor was released from University Hospital on Friday, leaving six students still in the hospital. Hochhalter, Castaldo and Graves are at Swedish Medical Center, all with spinal cord injuries, though doctors are unsure about permanent paralysis. Kirklin is serious but stable at Denver Health Medical Center. Kacey Ruegsegger is in fair condition at St. Luke's Medical Center.
And Patrick Ireland, the student television viewers saw desperately escaping through a window into the arms of police atop an armored car after he had been shot in the head and body, has been transferred to Craig Hospital, a rehabilitation facility, for further treatment.
The hospital reported Friday that Ireland is experiencing difficulties with language and with movement and feeling on his right side but is making good progress. He is, the hospital noted, "a very motivated young man."
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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